Mission Eastis a Danish international relief and development organisation, working in Eastern Europe and Asia. Our aim is to deliver relief aid, to create and support long-term development projects and to empower local aid organisations to carry on the work independently. Making no racial, religious or political distinction between those in need, we aim to assist the most vulnerable.

I thought I was going to die

Since 2009 Mission East has been at the forefront of a large-scale project aiming to fight the spread of HIV in Armenia and thus reduce the number of Armenians falling ill with AIDS.
In most parts of the world, including southern Africa, huge efforts of prevention, care and treatment have resulted in bringing the epidemic to a halt, with the number of new cases each year stabilizing.
This is contrasted with the situation in most of the countries of the former Soviet Union, including Armenia, where the number of new cases each year continues to grow.
Since 1988, 1,306 Armenians have been registered as being infected with HIV, of which 182 in 2011.
In reality, however, the number of people living with HIV in Armenia today is estimated to be as high as 3,500, i.e. a huge number of people are living with the infection without being aware of this, and thus representing a big risk to those who may get the disease from them.
The most common way Armenian women get infected is by getting the virus from their husbands through sexual intercourse. And if undetected, the virus may easily spread to their children during pregnancy. If, however, the level of the virus is kept low during pregnancy, through the intake of so-called ARV drugs, if delivery is done by caesarean section, and if the mothers abstain from breastfeeding, the chances of the mothers passing on the virus to their children is virtually zero.
Preventing the spread of the virus from mothers to their children is one of the principal ways in which the epidemic can be halted – provided of course that the mothers know what to do.
Please read the account of how one HIV-infected mother helped another HIV-infected mother realize her dream of getting a healthy child!